Pie lady's speech took its fated turn towards insanity

She wandered out and into this defining moment with the surefooted certainty of a frightened Thunderbirds marionette. She stared out from behind the lectern with a grin that looked as if it might not merely have been drawn on, but cast in concrete. If, at this moment, she'd been played footage of her own funeral, one doubts it would have caused the smile to crack, which was, in many ways, precisely what happened next.

- TOM PECK

It's a symphony hall, normally, the grand Birmingham theatre which the Tories insist on coming to each year to perform their latest cacophonic spree, but it's never heard a performance quite like this one, which was an attempt at some kind of symphony but played on a piano with a single key.

Liz Truss only has one idea, one note, and that's that growth. Growth growth growth! Growth will solve everything. She has absolutely no idea about how to make growth happen, apart from to cut taxes, keep saying the word "growth" and hope for the best. (She is so certain that cutting taxes will lead to growth that she has borrowed £45bn to do it, an act of insanity on which the markets, the voters and her party have already given their verdict.) You can achieve more than you think with a one-note piano.

You can hit it hard, you can tap it gently, you can do little staccato riffs, or you can do what this particular pianist does best and leave long torturous gaps between the notes as you glance around, leaving your audience unsure as to whether you're wanting them to clap for making the same point for the eleventh time or whether you're just trying - for the twelfth time - to relocate your place on the autocue.